“You’re travelin’ through a world that you can use, though you shall never own. Your little fire makes it seem like home.”
–“Little Fires” by K. W. Boyd
A winter storm washed the sandy fields and black oak thickets along the Brazos. I watched the clouds thin and stretch and give way to glorious sweeps of amber colored light. I headed out to the coulees and oat fields. I hoped to be the first to see something that had been hidden for centuries until the morning’s showers had removed a veil of dust.
I learned early to follow my brothers on their “arrowhead hunts.” We lived in the midst of an area rich in artifacts. Anywhere the ground was disturbed by an arroyo, stream bed or cultivated field was a productive area to search. With heads bent down, scanning the soil, we would advance slowly. We picked up and examined countless shards of stone in our path. We were experts at judging whether the bits of flint had been worked by human hand into a tool or weapon. Tiny bird points as finely faceted as a cut gem. Lance heads the size of a child’s hand and sandstone metates and manos that fit each other like ball and glove.
Brother Homer led me into the cool of a deep creek bed and pointed to a spot four foot below the bank rim where an embedded rock circle was exposed. The stones were reddish and crumbling. He explained it was an ancient fire circle. We dug out bits of charcoal and bone splinters and we talked about the lives of the people who sat and warmed themselves by that fire.
A pure pleasure of my childhood was the campfire. A very early memory is being led through dew-wet grass. There were dogs leaping in the darkness all around me. Our destination was a crackling fire. Sparks flew up to join the stars in the sooty sky and the smoke smelled delicious. The night air was cool as well water. Grownups talked and the older kids ran sorties into the black unknown. In many ways my life has never gotten any better than this.
By the age of 6 I took to the woods—my pockets filled with Strike Anywhere Matches—and built tiny fires everywhere. I became the king of the one-match fire. I loved the tea-like ceremony of laying the fire from small to large; I learned to appreciate the faithful kindling power of the inner bark of cedar. I parched corn in a tin can, baked a potato wrapped in a wet rag and cooked biscuit dough spiraled around a green stick. In English class I felt the desperate pain of Jack London’s doomed character in “To Build a Fire” with a special knowing.
In the mid-’90s I’d meet with some friends during the full moon somewhere in the desert and build a fire. We would burn some meat, drink whiskey and offer up juniper smoke to Our Lady of the Full Moon. We told stories, lied, cursed, belched and did manly things. No one brought a drum.
Our tongue-in-cheek name for this gathering was the Leathermen, after the pocket multi-tool which had pliers, screwdrivers and a blade for everything. When the coals settled and the campfire’s work was done we would turn toward town, cleansed by wood smoke and better persons for the ministrations of a fire.
I taught all my children the mysteries of fire building and my youngest daughter told me recently about when she was with a group of teens in the forest for a winter kegger and she was the only one who could get a fire started. A father’s pride!
I have a grandson who struggles with school. His mother was not amused when I made my own bumper sticker that read “My Grandson Was Kicked Out Of Little Ropers Pre-School.” However, he totally grasped the backyard campfire. From gathering small branches, to laying the fire to peeing on the coals and by stirring the ashes at night’s end he became the firemaster. He’s deliriously happy tending it all alone in the dark. We need a school of the elementals.
Fri, Feb. 25, 7 p.m. at the Weatherford Hotel will be the 18th annual Cowboy Campfire. Bill Vernieu, Warren Miller and I wanted to capture a little of the magic of a group of cowboys relaxed around their campfire telling stories, singing songs and reciting the old poems. We’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years, folks, and I think we’ve got it right! Please be our guest.
